Fatal Frame
by Jane Doe1111
Summary: Heavily based on the first Fatal Frame game. Arnold goes to a haunted mansion in search of his friends. When he does not return, Helga must go after to save him. But what will she find, and is it too late?
1. The Mansion

Hey folks, I'm back after a bit of a hiatus. Don't worry, I'll still be working on what I have in progress, I just went on a horror binge and came up with this little idea. I thought I'd see how this played out.

I'll be basing this heavily on the first Fatal Frame game, and I imagine I'll be heavily influenced by the Silent Hill franchise.

Here we go!

Hey Arnold! Is owned by Nickelodeon/Viacom/Craig Barltett, the Fatal Frame franchise belongs to Tecmo, and Silent Hill is owned by Konami.

X x x x x x x x x x x

_I wonder how long it's been... since Arnold and I began to see things... that other people couldn't see..._

Helga felt the gravel crunch under the wheels of her car as she drove to the outskirts of the abandoned town. The perpetual fog obscured her vision The sun had just set, casting a dark haze over the town.

_Arnold is the sweetest, most gentle person you could ever hope to meet. I've loved him for years, but I've never told him... Over the years, we've shared so much, but I never had the courage to tell him. Now it may be too late..._

She shook her head, trying to stifle the thought.

_He went after his friends, to this dark place. Gerald went with Phoebe and Sid to this lonely town, specifically the ancient mansion at the edge of town. Some stupid 'right of passage,' spend the night in a haunted house, taking notes and pictures of the experience. Arnold had been sick and had not joined them. _

_Then a week passed. _

_Then two. _

_Then Arnold left to find them. _

The mansion loomed before her ominously. The town had been abandoned generations ago, and the years of neglect had taken their toll on the building. Helga took a deep breath and entered the gate surrounding the property_, _suddenly feeling very unprepared.

X x x x x x x x x x

_He was running. Hands grabbed at him, as if through the walls, and the sound of heavy footprints followed him. He tripped over a swollen floorboard, sending the camera in his hands skittering across the floor. The flash startled him, but he quickly returned to his feet and resumed his escape. In trying to pick up his camera, he fell again, this time facing his pursuer. _

_, _

_A young woman slowly made her way towards him, a hand outstretched to him. He could see ropes wrapped around both wrists, ankles, and one around her neck, like perverse jewelry. Her flowing hair obscured her face, but he felt something familiar about her, something he could not place. _

_She was almost upon him now, he raised an arm to his eyes, and everything went black. _

X x x x x x x x x

As Helga walked into the building, she knew something was wrong. The only sound for miles was the sound of the floorboards creaking beneath her feet and the wind outside. She should have been alone in the mansion, yet lit candles adorned the sconces on the walls.

Though lit, the foyer was still dim. Her flashlight illuminated the floor, and the dusty footprints left behind by recent entrants.

She wandered through the entrance, trying to mark down a rudimentary map as she progressed. As she opened a door, she saw something move in her peripheral vision. She turned to face it, and nearly dropped her flashlight. Before her, for just a moment, stood Sid.

"The ropes... the ropes..."

As he spoke, he faded away, like a shadow in sunlight. _A hallucination...? No... you know better... Something bad happened here... _

Helga swallowed and continued through the door. She was in a narrow hallway, ropes hung from the rafters. _Could that be what Sid was talking about...?_ Something glinted in the light of her flashlight. A camera.

"Heh... Arnold, you jerk... you dropped my camera..." Helga smiled to herself, remembering how Arnold came to possess the camera. It was his 17th birthday, and he had recently joined the photography club at school, _to impress some girl, no doubt. _She wanted to get him something nice, but was strapped for cash. Her mother had a digital camera stored in her bedroom, and it's not like _she_ was going to use it any time soon... Helga couldn't decide who was more excited when he unwrapped it, he or she. Since then, he could not be found without it. She overheard Gerald joking with him, asking if he brought it to bed with him.

Helga absentmindedly flipped through the images. There were pictures of Gerald and Phoebe, places around town, the boarding house, and then several darker ones. Photos of inside the mansion, with ghastly images visible. The visage of a man - screaming in pain, a man covered in burns, and the last image made her blood run cold.

The picture showed Arnold on his hands and knees, his eyes wide in terror, and behind him... a young woman with her face obscured by her hair stalked towards him.

A chime sounded behind her, she spun around and looked up. Laying on the rafters was another ghostly image of Sid, pointing toward the door she had not entered. Instinctively, she raised the camera and took a picture. As he faded away, she heard him whisper "She's coming... she's coming!"

_Criminy... this is bad..._

She went to the door he pointed at and went through it. The best she could figure, she was in a living room. A shaky staircase connected two floors, and a chandelier barely hung on to the cathedral ceiling. An old fireplace dominated the far wall. An ornate mirror had once adorned the wall above it, but it had shattered. Large pieces were still attached to the frame, but below the floor was littered with silvery shards of glass. Passing the light across the shards, she saw something moving. Quickly looking to the staircase, she saw a familiar figure slowly walking up the steps.

"Arnold! Wait!"

Throwing caution to the wind, Helga ran to the steps to catch him. Seeing nothing, she ran up the stairs to the landing. Again, nothing.

"...Arnold?"

The stairs creaked behind her. She spun around, yet saw nothing. Her heart pounding, she backed up and drew the camera.

_There's... there's nothing there... where did he-what was that?_

There was a shimmer in the viewfinder, then another, then the horrific face of a burned man appeared, almost on top of her. Startled, she tapped the capture button. The flash knocked the spirit back, and seemed to hurt him. Helga paused, stunned, then took another picture. The spirit was weak now. She brought the camera up again, made sure he was in the direct center of the viewfinder, and took the final shot. He screamed and crumpled to the ground, then slowly dissipated.

_This camera... has the power to capture ghosts... What the heck was MIRIAM doing with it? _

_And... what happened to Phoebe, Gerald, and Sid?_

_...What happened to Arnold...?_

x x x x x x x x x x

End Chapter 1

R&R


	2. Sid

Hey friends! Next chapter here.

I don't own Hey Arnold, Fatal Frame, any horror …. anything.

Also, in the original Fatal Frame, the cult was of Shinto origin, I drew social parallels (basically how the community views them) to Native American groups – I in no way intend to suggest that the Native Americans do the sort of stuff that … is gonna happen later in the story, so please – Take no offense, it's just fanfiction. :-(

x x x x x x x x x x x x

Chapter 2

She slumped to the floor, her pulse still pounding in her ears. She followed the beam of light from her flashlight, and saw something on the floor. It was a small notebook, with Arnold's name scrawled across the top. She opened it and began reading.

_Nutiket Mansion Investigation_

_Nutiket Mansion was once the home of a large landowner that controlled vast areas of land. They also say that the site held some special significance that had to do with the Native American rituals of the region. (I couldn't find any detailed books about these rituals, though.)_

_The last master of the Nutiket family line massacred his entire household – he even went into the town and murdered several people before he was finally stopped. Later, another family that tried to live there disappeared. Because of incidents like these, nobody visits the mansion anymore -even the town has slowly been abandoned because of the horrible events. The mansion lies in ruin. _

_Maybe that's why there aren't any accounts of the rituals, and why the town has been left off several maps. _

_I've had a bad feeling ever since I came to this mansion. I'm leaving notes in this notebook just in case anything happens to me. I have to find Gerald and the others fast... I hope it's not too late! _

Helga checked the rest of the level, in vain hope that she would find Arnold. All she found was a padlocked door and a fallen staircase. She had seen a faint shadow moving below the staircase. Perhaps her own, perhaps...

She descended the staircase she had climbed up. A few steps down, she saw Sid again, standing in front of a wall, and then walked through it. She ran down the stairs and stood where she had seen him. There was debris; boxes and planks of wood, and a painting hung on the wall. It depicted a horrific scene – a young woman, torn to pieces, with several men wearing animal masks circling her remains. As she stood before it, her camera shook.

A chime sounded beside her, and she turned to see a little girl, no older than nine, standing there. She slowly pointed at the camera, and then at the painting.

_Should I... take a picture? _

She looked to the painting again, then back to the little girl. She was alone. _Who was she...? So familiar..._ She faced the painting once more and took a picture of it.

Instead of the painting, the picture revealed a door. After shoving the debris aside, she took the painting from the wall and threw it on the pile. True to what the picture showed, she now stood before a door. Opening it, she found herself in a music room. In the center of the room, there was an ancient grand piano, illuminated by her flashlight and small beams of moonlight through the boarded up windows. Several scraps of paper were laying on the lid of the piano. Helga recognized Sid's horrific scribbling, and could just barely read his notes.

_Aug 20. Gerald wants some background info for this trip – he says if the story is good enough, he'll sell it to some movie maker and give us all a cut of the profits. We'll live like kings! Arnold will be sorry he didn't come with us then! There's supposed by be a book about Nutiket Mansion by some folklorist, an expert in Native American mythology. Of course Gerald has me looking for it – send Sid to do the bitch-work while he and Phoebe cuddle. Jerk. _

_Aug 22. I can't find the book, but I did some checking on the folklorist. I found out he moved into Nutiket Mansion to do some research on it, but something happened and his whole family disappeared. I found a newspaper article in the library about it, but it was more of a small missing-persons story than anything useful. _

_Sept. 10. All we can really figure out is that there was a family that lived at the mansion and were part of some kooky Native American sect, 'something' happened, the head of the family went nuts and killed everyone, and then a new family moved in and disappeared. I tried to track down former inhabitants of the town, but there's no information on them anywhere. This is getting good – if Gerald wants to sell this, he can make up whatever he wants – no one's going to tell him he made it up, except for us!_

_Sept 10. The mansion is a dump, there's rotting wood everywhere, everything's dusty, and the smell is awful. Like 1000 years of mildewy death! Even worse, the entrance door is broken. It slammed shut as soon as we came in, and now it won't move. We'll have to find another way out, - all the windows are boarded up too, there's got to be a backdoor though, right? _

_Sept 11. I'm not feeling so hot. Ever since Phoebe took my picture, I've been having a hard time breathing and my joints are killing me. Phoebe says it's probably the flu, so they've been keeping their distance – they keep sneaking off to go 'explore.' Whatever – it's probably just allergies. With all the dust and mold around, I'm surprised they're not dying. That picture is weird though. I think Gerald's camera is broken. Those stupid ropes... what's with this place and ropes anyway?_

The last entry was more scribble than script, Sid must have been very ill at this point.

_There's another rope! And another rope! And another! _

_I see a little girl, so sweet! _

A light thud came from a large armoire in the corner of the room.

_What was that? ….Did something fall?_

Trembling slightly, she opened the door. There was nothing there, only a wooden flute. Sighing in relief, she reached a hand out to pick up the flute. A creak sounded behind her, spinning around, she saw nothing. When she turned back, she nearly screamed.

Before her lay Sid's mangled body. His neck had been snapped and his limbs hung at odd angles to the rest of his body. His eyes were wide with fear, and his mouth was frozen in a perpetual scream. In disbelief, she reached a shaking hand to touch his cheek. As she made contact, she was overwhelmed by delirious visions.

_He was running, running after something? No, being chased! The doors were all broken – the music room! The windows were boarded shut, damn! What about that cupboard thing? Yeah, that's good! Close the door, no, leave it open just a little to know when it's safe! Who's breathing so hard? Stop it! oh... that's me. Okay, calm down... oh God, there she is! She's coming toward me oh God she can see me no no no... wait, I know NO! AUGH!_

The vision stopped when the woman was right in front of his face. Helga was still – sobered by the knowledge that she had seen Sid's final moments. When her sight cleared, his body was gone, with just the flute left behind. She gently placed it in her bag – A macabre souvenir. She left the room, dejected and losing hope of ever seeing her friends again.

"Help me... Someone help me..."

The ghostly apparition of Sid had returned, this time behind her – reaching for her neck. Helga raised the camera and took several shots. He crumpled awkwardly to his broken knees and vanished – only to reappear behind Helga once more, and clamped his fingers around her thin neck.

"Help me... Someone please help me..."

She freed herself from his grasp. Panicked tears streaming down her face, she pounded the shutter button until he vanished for good – trying with all her might to ignore his tortured pleas for help.

When she was finally alone, she backed against a wall and sobbed. What felt like hours later, she steadied herself and cautiously made her way for the exit. Gently brushing the piano as she left, she felt something cold and metal fall to the floor.

A large brass key.

X x x x x x x

Feeling the cold metal in her hand, she made a mad dash for the padlocked door, threw it open and slammed it shut behind her.

After catching her breath she made her way down this new hallway and stopped short. Ahead of her was a small woman of Asian descent. With long black hair in a tight bun and dressed in a heavy blue sweater with black slacks, she stood in front of a floor-length mirror.

"Pheebs! Thank God you're..."

The woman turned to face Helga, then vanished.

"... Oh, Phoebe... Not you too..."

x x x x x x x x x

End Chapter 2

R&R


End file.
